Touchstone Coaching – Zen Self Help

With A.J. Mahari

Posts Tagged ‘Mental Health Coach A.J. Mahari’

About

June 5th, 2010 | Author: A.J. Mahari

A.J. Mahari

G’day, my name is A.J. Mahari and welcome to my Mental Health and Life Coaching blog with a focus on providing information to increase your awareness.

I have been life coaching now for just over six years. I have learned a lot about life the hard way and bring a tremendous amount of my own life experiences with loss, abuse, mental health challenges and subsequent recovery, to the work that I do with my mental health and life coaching clients.

I hope you will find something on this site and/or my other sites and blogs helpful and/or interesting. If you are interested in my coaching services please be sure to read more about what I have to offer. Reading my various blogs and web sites will also give you a strong sense of where I am coming from.

Whatever might have brought you to this site, I hope that you are open to the change that might be trying to get your attention. You deserve to give yourself the very best opportunities you can to learn more about yourself and to continue to grow in ways that will create an increasing awareness of how change will enhance your experience in life.

More Touchstone Life Coaching Information

As a Life Coach, BPD and Mental Health Coach I have an open, in depth, and inclusively diverse philosophy about Life Coaching and the process of its unfolding between myself and each client I work with.

New beginnings beckon to us from what are experienced first as losses, failures, and painful experiences. There are times in life when transitioning from one phase to another the journey can be augmented positively by sharing part of it with a life coach like myself. Someone to walk a few steps of this explorative transition with you in a supportive, compassionate, and caring way.

Life coaching is a collaborative process with between the coach and the client with the mandate of supporting the client in achieving his or her personal goals. The process of life coaching, unlike psychotherapy, does not focus on the past or involve delving into one’s past. Life coaching focuses on effecting wanted and needed change in a client’s current and future thinking, attitude, feelings, and/or behaviour.

Personal Coaching, whether it is general life coach, BPD (BPD loved ones) coaching or mental health coaching is a process of supporting the client in his or her learning more about him/herself. In my experience, as a life coach, asking the client questions in a reflective way that is in response to what the client shares encourages the client to seek his or her own answers. Answers that will make themselves known through the kind of self-examination that produces both a deeper self-awareness and an increasing personal insight. Personal coaching is a learning experience.

Most clients seek me out as a life coach because they have come to some type of crossroads. They have come to realize that there is change needed in some area of their lives. Change is not easy for anyone. In some cases, where change is not possible, clients are exploring ways of coming to terms with challenges. In other cases clients are in search of more effective coping skills and techniques. And some clients face certain life challenges that call for adapation and strategizing when change itself isn’t the goal or is not a possible solution. Many clients seek support to find their way to the kind of personal understanding that enhances their confidence in being able to identity their needs and wants in ways that are the harbingers of the taking of the action required to create desired change or enhance personal coping strategies and to achieve personal, relationship, or career goals.

What you need to know about A.J. Mahari as a Life Coach as she describes in her own words along with visting the many links to her sites and online work will hopefully give you a firm idea of what A.J. has to offer to you as prospective client.

I am not a mental health professional
I have taken university courses in social work, psychology, religion, philosophy, sociology, communications, journalism, to name but a few
I have not pursued a degree because I believe in being a free-thinker
Not pursuing a degree has meant that I have been able to maintain an out-of-the-box experiential way of learning
I have extensive first-hand life experience in what change requires
I have extensive first-hand life experience in coping effectively with grief
I have failed enough times in my life to truly know that success is failure turned inward out – failing is a necessary prerequisite for true success
Failing and making mistakes are the growth opportunities that are gifts disguised as hard-times
I have learned to heal from childhood abandonment and how not to be blocked by the past
I have extensive first-hand life experience in recovery
I have extensive first-hand life experience in learning to compensate for what cannot be changed and in learning to change what can be changed and accept and compensate for what cannot be changed
I believe a down-to-earth personal approach – humanistic positive psychology
I am extremely well-read and have 8 years experience life coaching
I have been writing online for 15 years.

Some people do learn more from courses and getting degrees and others, like myself, become students of life and live and learn very experientially. You have to decide what is most important to you when thinking about working with a life coach. Do you value someone with a degree simply because they have a degree? Do you value someone because they have “professional” backing or testimonials in a given area of coaching or do you value what I have to offer?

What I have to offer is over 5 decades now of learning. Over 50 years of trial and error and putting to work in my own life, healing, recovery, change, grieving, forgiving , transforming myself into a healthy functional human being with compassion and empathy. I am a person of substance and character – not glitz, glamour and all the “right” promises or “catchy sales-pitches”. I give all I have to give to each and every client, each and every time we work together. I have 8 years experience coaching. I am extremly well-read and that coupled with a rich history of life experience – most of which was the you- have-to-learn-fro- it type of difficult life experience.

I invite you to listen to my Podcasts and to watch my Videos to give you more of an idea of what I am about and where I am coming from. This, along with all that I have written online, will provide you with a sense of whether I am the coach for you.

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Mental Health Coach A.J. Mahari

June 4th, 2010 | Author: A.J. Mahari

Mental Health Coaching Services

Mental Health Coaching is a more specialized niche within over-all Life Coaching. A.J. Mahari has been working in this area of coaching for many years now. Her expertize comes from her own life challenges and experience, as well as some College and University education. A.J. is not a mental health professional, hwoever. A.J. is an excellent, compassionate, and validating listener. She provides her clients with support, information, feedback, well-informed questions, and helps clients to identify goals and strategize to meet those goals. Often for those with any form or type of mental illness, even where recovery is possible, the over-all framework of mental health coaching is one that stresses coping and education about the client’s mental illness and empowering the client to make choices that can produce positive change in their quality of life and ability to cope.

You may benefit from A.J. Mahari’s Mental Health Coaching if you feel out of balance in your emotional and/or relational life. Talking things over with A.J. can help you to clarify what you want and need in your life and what you can do to empower yourself toward identifying, meeting, and accomplishing those goals. Perhaps you aren’t happy in a current relationship and you want to get clarity. Perhaps you have identified some pattern in your relationships that is blocking you from living a more balanced, peaceful, and happy life. Maybe you want to become more interdependent. Many people are involved in relating in ways that are codependent and resultingly very painful and they don’t often realize this. Perhaps you still need to discover more about who you really are.

A.J. Mahari is an advocate for helping others to help and empower themselves by fostering and nurturing the liberation of each client’s authentic inner self. It is important to identify the path of change for each individual that is the way toward choosing and creating the change that they hunger for. It is the change that will further reveal each individual’s own personal path of ever-increasing authenticity. Change is a constant in life. We are always learning, growing, healing, and changing. Developing a personal style of mastery with one’s own change is not only a way to recover, heal, or grow, but it is the sacred path of spiritual change. It is the path upon which each soul seeks to leave its footprint in the ever-shifting sands of authentic self-actualization.

A.J. also works extensively with many clients with mental health challenges. Mental health coaching involves support for those diagnosed with a mental illness and/or their loved ones and actively involves exploring and identifying coping strategies. With an emphasis on the client finding his or her way forward in life through identifying goals, planning appropriate and needed action, and then supporting each client in following through on planned exercises and strategies to attain his or her goals. I support the client’s own determined choice and making of decisions that are the foundation of needed and/or desired change in coping, functioning, and living.

Each individual client I coach determines the pace and style of his or her own coaching process and experience. I offer mental health coaching services that are relevant for people with very different life experiences and mental health needs.

As a life coach I provide a caring, compassionate, safe, confidential, non judgemental, validating and supportive relationship within which clients can feel empowered to explore their present-day needs. I essentially act as a human mirror for my clients. I share with my clients an outside and unbiased perspective as to what I observe in listening to their feelings, experiences, and concerns.

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Contemplating Death

March 29th, 2010 | Author: A.J. Mahari

Chapter 17 – Contemplating Death

It is truly a great cosmic paradox that one of the best teachers in all of life turns out to be death. No person or situation could ever teach you as much as death has to teach you. While someone could tell you that you are not your body, death shows you. While someone could remind you of the insignificance of the things that you cling to, death takes them all away in a second. While people can teach you that men and women of all races are equal and that there is no difference between the rich and the poor, death instantly makes us all the same.

The question is, are you going to wait until that last moment to let death be your teacher? The mere possibility of death has the power to teach us at any moment. A wise person realizes that at any moment they may breathe out, and the breath may not come back in. It could happen any time, in any place, and your last breath is gone. You have to learn from this. A wise being completely and totally embraces the reality, the inevitability, and the unpredictability of death.

Any time you’re having trouble with something, think of death. Let’s say you’re the jealous type, and you can’t stand anyone being close to your mate. Think about what will happen when you’re no longer here. Is it really all that romantic that your loved one should live alone with no one to care for them? If you can get past your personal issues, you’ll find that you want the person you love to be happy and to have a full and beautiful life. Since that is what you want for them, why are you bothering them now just for talking to someone?

It shouldn’t take death to challenge you to live at your highest level. Why wait until everything is taken from you before you learn to dig down deep inside yourself to reach your highest potential? A wise person affirms, “If with one breath all of this can change, then I want to live at the highest level while I’m alive. I’m going to stop bothering the people I love. I’m going to live life from the deepest part of my being.”

This is the consciousness necessary for deep and meaningful relationships. Look how callous we get with our loved ones. We take it for granted that they’re there and that they’ll continue to be there for us. What if they died? What if you died? What if you knew that this evening would be the last time you’d get to see them? Imagine that an angel comes down and tells you, “Straighten up your affairs. You will not awake from your sleep tonight. You’re coming to me.” Then you’d know that every person you see that day, you’d be seeing for the last time. How would you feel? How would you interact with them? Would you even bother with the little grudges and complaints you’ve been carrying around? How much love could you give the ones you love, knowing it would be the last time you’d get to be with them? Think about what it would be like if you lived like that every moment with everyone. Your life would be really different. You should contemplate this. Death is not a morbid thought. Death is the greatest teacher in all of life.

Take a moment to look at the things you think you need. Look at how much time and energy you put into various activities. Imagine if you knew you were going to die within a week or a month. How would that change things? How would your priorities change? How would your thoughts change? Think honestly about what you would do with your last week. What a wonderful thought to contemplate. Then ponder this question: If that’s really what you would do with your last week, what are you doing with the rest of your time? Wasting it? Throwing it away? Treating it like it’s not something precious? What are you doing with life? That is what death asks you.

Let’s say you’re living life without the thought of death, and the Angel of Death comes to you and says, “Come, it’s time to go.” You say, “But no. You’re supposed to give me a warning so I can decide what I want to do with my last week. I’m supposed to get one more week.” Do you know what Death will say to you? He’ll say, “My God! I gave you fifty-two weeks this past year alone. And look at all the other weeks I’ve given you. Why would you need one more? What did you do with all those?” If asked that, what are you going to say? How will you answer? “I wasn’t paying attention . . . I didn’t think it mattered.” That’s a pretty amazing thing to say about your life.

Death is a great teacher. But who lives with that level of awareness? It doesn’t matter what age you are; at any time you could take a breath and there may never be another. It happens all the time — to babies, to teenagers, to people in mid-life — not just to the aged. One breath and they’re gone. No one knows when their time will be. That’s not how it works.

So why not be bold enough to regularly reflect on how you would live that last week? If you were to ask this question of people who are truly awakened, they wouldn’t have any problem answering you. Not a thing would change inside of them. Not a thought would cross their minds. If death were to come in an hour, if death were to come in a week, or if death were to come in a year, they would live exactly the same way as they’re living now. There is not a single thing they carry inside of their hearts that they would rather be doing. In other words, they are living their lives fully and are not making compromises or playing games with themselves.

You have to be willing to look at what it would be like if death was staring you in the face. Then you have to come to peace within yourself so that it doesn’t make any difference whether it is or not. There is a story of a great yogi who said that every moment of his life he felt as though a sword were suspended above his head by a spiderweb. He lived his life with the awareness that he was that close to death. You are that close to death. Every time you get in the car, every time you walk across the street, and every time you eat something, it could be the last thing you do. Do you realize that what you’re doing at any moment is something that someone was doing when they died? “He died eating dinner . . . He died in a car accident, two miles from his home . . . She died in a plane wreck on a trip to New York . . . He went to bed and never woke up . . .” At some point, this is how it happened to somebody. No matter what you’re doing, you can be sure somebody died that way.

You must not be afraid to discuss death. Don’t get upright about it. Instead, let this knowledge help you to live every moment of your life fully, because every moment matters. Thar’s what happens when somebody knows they only have a week left. You can be certain that they would tell you that the most important week they ever had was that last week. Everything is a million times more meaningful in that final week. What if you were to live every week that way?

Copyright © 2007 Reprinted with permission by New Harbinger Publications, Inc. From the book Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer http://www.newharbinger.com/productdetails.cfm?SKU=5372

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